The Figure in the Carpet

by Henry James
I HAD done a few things and earned a few pence - I had perhaps even

had time to begin to think I was finer than was perceived by the
patronising; but when I take the little measure of my course (a

fidgety habit, for it's none of the longest yet) I count my real
start from the evening George Corvick, breathless and worried, came

in to ask me a service. He had done more things than I, and earned
more pence, though there were chances for cleverness I thought he

sometimes missed. I could only however that evening declare to him
that he never missed one for kindness. There was almost rapture in

hearing it proposed to me to prepare for THE MIDDLE, the organ of
our lucubrations, so called from the position in the week of its

day of appearance, an article for which he had made himself
responsible and of which, tied up with a stout string, he laid on

my table the subject. I pounced upon my opportunity - that is on
the first volume of it - and paid scant attention to my friend's

explanation of his appeal. What explanation could be more to the
point than my obviousfitness for the task? I had written on Hugh

Vereker, but never a word in THE MIDDLE, where my dealings were
mainly with the ladies and the minor poets. This was his new

novel, an advance copy, and whatever much or little it should do
for his reputation I was clear on the spot as to what it should do

for mine. Moreover if I always read him as soon as I could get
hold of him I had a particular reason for wishing to read him now:

I had accepted an invitation to Bridges for the following Sunday,
and it had been mentioned in Lady Jane's note that Mr. Vereker was

to be there. I was young enough for a flutter at meeting a man of
his renown, and innocent enough to believe the occasion would

demand the display of an acquaintance with his "last."
Corvick, who had promised a review of it, had not even had time to

read it; he had gone to pieces in consequence of news requiring -
as on precipitate reflexion he judged - that he should catch the

night-mail to Paris. He had had a telegram from Gwendolen Erme in
answer to his letter offering to fly to her aid. I knew already

about Gwendolen Erme; I had never seen her, but I had my ideas,
which were mainly to the effect that Corvick would marry her if her

mother would only die. That lady seemed now in a fair way to
oblige him; after some dreadful mistake about a climate or a "cure"

she had suddenly collapsed on the return from abroad. Her
daughter, unsupported and alarmed, desiring to make a rush for home

but hesitating at the risk, had accepted our friend's assistance,
and it was my secret belief that at sight of him Mrs. Erme would

pull round. His own belief was scarcely to be called secret; it
discernibly at any rate differed from mine. He had showed me

Gwendolen's photograph with the remark that she wasn't pretty but
was awfully interesting; she had published at the age of nineteen a

novel in three volumes, "Deep Down," about which, in THE MIDDLE, he
had been really splendid. He appreciated my present eagerness and

undertook that the periodical in question should do no less; then
at the last, with his hand on the door, he said to me: "Of course

you'll be all right, you know." Seeing I was a trifle vague he
added: "I mean you won't be silly."

"Silly - about Vereker! Why what do I ever find him but awfully
clever?"

"Well, what's that but silly? What on earth does 'awfully clever'
mean? For God's sake try to get AT him. Don't let him suffer by

our arrangement. Speak of him, you know, if you can, as I should
have spoken of him."

I wondered an instant. "You mean as far and away the biggest of
the lot - that sort of thing?"

Corvick almost groaned. "Oh you know, I don't put them back to
back that way; it's the infancy of art! But he gives me a pleasure

so rare; the sense of" - he mused a little - "something or other."
I wondered again. "The sense, pray, of want?"

"My dear man, that's just what I want YOU to say!"
Even before he had banged the door I had begun, book in hand, to

prepare myself to say it. I sat up with Vereker half the night;
Corvick couldn't have done more than that. He was awfully clever -

I stuck to that, but he wasn't a bit the biggest of the lot. I
didn't allude to the lot, however; I flattered myself that I

emerged on this occasion from the infancy of art. "It's all
right," they declared vividly at the office; and when the number

appeared I felt there was a basis on which I could meet the great
man. It gave me confidence for a day or two - then that confidence

dropped. I had fancied him reading it with relish, but if Corvick
wasn't satisfied how could Vereker himself be? I reflected indeed

that the heat of the admirer was sometimes grosser even than the
appetite of the scribe. Corvick at all events wrote me from Paris

a little ill-humouredly. Mrs. Erme was pulling round, and I hadn't
at all said what Vereker gave him the sense of.

CHAPTER II
THE effect of my visit to Bridges was to turn me out for more

profundity. Hugh Vereker, as I saw him there, was of a contact so
void of angles that I blushed for the poverty of imagination

involved in my small precautions. If he was in spirits it wasn't
because he had read my review; in fact on the Sunday morning I felt

sure he hadn't read it, though THE MIDDLE had been out three days
and bloomed, I assured myself, in the stiff garden of periodicals

which gave one of the ormolu tables the air of a stand at a
station. The impression he made on me personally was such that I

wished him to read it, and I corrected to this end with a
surreptitious hand what might be wanting in the careless

conspicuity of the sheet. I'm afraid I even watched the result of
my manoeuvre, but up to luncheon I watched in vain.

When afterwards, in the course of our gregarious walk, I found
myself for half an hour, not perhaps without another manoeuvre, at

the great man's side, the result of his affability was a still
livelier desire that he shouldn't remain in ignorance of the

peculiar justice I had done him. It wasn't that he seemed to
thirst for justice; on the contrary I hadn't yet caught in his talk

the faintest grunt of a grudge - a note for which my young
experience had already given me an ear. Of late he had had more

recognition, and it was pleasant, as we used to say in THE MIDDLE,
to see how it drew him out. He wasn't of course popular, but I

judged one of the sources of his good humour to be precisely that
his success was independent of that. He had none the less become

in a manner the fashion; the critics at least had put on a spurt
and caught up with him. We had found out at last how clever he

was, and he had had to make the best of the loss of his mystery. I
was strongly tempted, as I walked beside him, to let him know how

much of that unveiling was my act; and there was a moment when I
probably should have done so had not one of the ladies of our

party, snatching a place at his other elbow, just then appealed to
him in a spirit comparativelyselfish. It was very discouraging:

I almost felt the liberty had been taken with myself.
I had had on my tongue's end, for my own part, a phrase or two

about the right word at the right time; but later on I was glad not
to have spoken, for when on our return we clustered at tea I

perceived Lady Jane, who had not been out with us, brandishing THE
MIDDLE with her longest arm. She had taken it up at her leisure;

she was delighted with what she had found, and I saw that, as a
mistake in a man may often be a felicity in a woman, she would

practically do for me what I hadn't been able to do for myself.
"Some sweet little truths that needed to be spoken," I heard her

declare, thrusting the paper at rather a bewildered couple by the
fireplace. She grabbed it away from them again on the reappearance

of Hugh Vereker, who after our walk had been upstairs to change
something. "I know you don't in general look at this kind of

thing, but it's an occasion really for doing so. You HAVEN'T seen
it? Then you must. The man has actually got AT you, at what I